Help with PHP include function

[MMA Elite]

I've started to take up web design and am a PHP novice so I dont understand new functions I find. I am trying to embed a section of code for my navbar into my document so I dont have to edit every document when I modify my navbar. For most of my site I use ASP.Net so I use the following method to do this, which works just fine.

 

<!--#include virtual="/navbar.htm"-->

 

 

But for my contact page I made it in PHP and I tried using the include message (the following) and I come up with the following error.

 

 

<?php include("/navbar.htm"); ?>

 

 

Error

 

Warning: include(./navbar.htm) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in D:\Hosting\4393159\html\contact\contact.php on line 43Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening './navbar.htm' for inclusion (include_path='.;C:\php5\pear') in D:\Hosting\4393159\html\contact\contact.php on line 43

 

 

From what I understand I think its because its trying to find it from my "contact" folder when I'm trying to read it from the main root.

 

My file locations are as follows

 

website.com/navbar.htmwebsite.com/contact/contact.php

 

 

What am I doing wrong and how can I get this to work right? (Sorry if I'm not speaking clearly, I'm very tired right now)

[fred]

Check the manual for an explanation of where PHP will look for includes. / implies an absolute file path starting in the root directory. There's no guaranteed shortcut to the webroot but you can use ../navbar.htm if you just want to include a file from the parent directory.

[MMA Elite]

Thanks, I guess I'll just have to deal with using the "." for getting to the root i want.

[K^2]

Just use a relative path.

 

 

<?php include("/../navbar.htm"); ?>

 

 

Try this.